Sinking Ship Phenomenon

I can say that all of the "Debunking Flat Earth theories" have been debunked, except for one, the sinking ship phenomenon. When a ship goes far, it appears as if it is sinking, the farther it gets. First the body slowly disappears, and then the rest of the ship, from the bottom-up. Can anybody prove this wrong, the ensure that the earth really is flat? Thanks.

I can say that all of the "Debunking Flat Earth theories" have been debunked, except for one, the sinking ship phenomenon. When a ship goes far, it appears as if it is sinking, the farther it gets. First the body slowly disappears, and then the rest of the ship, from the bottom-up. Can anybody prove this wrong, the ensure that the earth really is flat? Thanks.

Saying that all but one has been debunked is a pretty bold statement. Can you document those?

I can say that all of the "Debunking Flat Earth theories" have been debunked, except for one, the sinking ship phenomenon. When a ship goes far, it appears as if it is sinking, the farther it gets. First the body slowly disappears, and then the rest of the ship, from the bottom-up. Can anybody prove this wrong, the ensure that the earth really is flat? Thanks.

I don't know about debunked but there has been a lot of evidence which suggest that the sinking ship phenomenon is, at times, caused by chaotic optical/atmospheric conditions and not by the shape of the earth.

Notice how the shore suffers from a sinking ship effect then later appears? To someone who claims that the sinking ship effect is an indicator to the shape of the earth then, based on the video above, the earth alternates between round and flat.

I can say that all of the "Debunking Flat Earth theories" have been debunked, except for one, the sinking ship phenomenon. When a ship goes far, it appears as if it is sinking, the farther it gets. First the body slowly disappears, and then the rest of the ship, from the bottom-up. Can anybody prove this wrong, the ensure that the earth really is flat? Thanks.

I don't know about debunked but there has been a lot of evidence which suggest that the sinking ship phenomenon is, at times, caused by chaotic optical/atmospheric conditions and not by the shape of the earth.

Notice how the shore suffers from a sinking ship effect then later appears? To someone who claims that the sinking ship effect is an indicator to the shape of the earth then, based on the video above, the earth alternates between round and flat.

Mirages do happen. But for one, every "sinking ship" witnessed would mean there is a mirage present in all cases. For two, I just don't see how a mirage, or perspective for that matter, explains the hull first 'sinking' like here:

Rowbotham seems to disagree. He invokes "The Laws of Perspective" in ENAG Chapt. XIV:

"From the several cases now advanced, which are selected from a great number of instances involving the same law, the third proposition (on page 203) that "any distinctive part of a body will become invisible before the whole or any larger part of the same body," is sufficiently demonstrated. It will therefore be readily seen that the hull of a receding ship obeying the same law must disappear on a plane surface, before the mast head. If it is put in the form of a syllogism the conclusion is inevitable:--

Any distinctive part of a receding object becomes invisible before the whole or any larger part of the same object."

I can say that all of the "Debunking Flat Earth theories" have been debunked, except for one, the sinking ship phenomenon. When a ship goes far, it appears as if it is sinking, the farther it gets. First the body slowly disappears, and then the rest of the ship, from the bottom-up. Can anybody prove this wrong, the ensure that the earth really is flat? Thanks.

As the distance between visible objects and the observer's eye increases, the rays of light received by the eye that are reflected by the object at every point along its length continually decrease in angle. Once the angles of the rays emerging from the object at any given length along that object drops below the angles of light reflected from the edge of the horizon or become small enough that the rays of light intersect the horizon's light (the horizon theoretically must be at eye level on an indefinitely extended plane, disregarding atmospheric effects) the object in question will be blocked by the horizon up to that height. Eventually, if an object is far enough from the observer it will be totally obscured by the horizon.

« Last Edit: January 30, 2019, 06:41:17 PM by George Jetson »

If you've proven yourself able to make arguments that make him/her experience cognitive dissonance, Max_Almond will whine about you in his/her signature (this means you, George Jetson, Baby Thork, Sandokhan, Tom Bishop, and Totallackey).

I can say that all of the "Debunking Flat Earth theories" have been debunked, except for one, the sinking ship phenomenon. When a ship goes far, it appears as if it is sinking, the farther it gets. First the body slowly disappears, and then the rest of the ship, from the bottom-up. Can anybody prove this wrong, the ensure that the earth really is flat? Thanks.

As the distance between visible objects and the observer's eye increases, the rays of light received by the eye that are reflected by the object at every point along its length continually decrease in angle. Once the angles of the rays emerging from the object at any given length along that object drops below the angles of light reflected from the edge of the horizon (which theoretically must be at eye level on an indefinitely extended plane, disregarding atmospheric effects) the object in question will be blocked by the horizon up to that height. Eventually, if an object is far enough from the observer it will be totally obscured by the horizon.

The trick here is that on a flat plane the object wouldn't disappear from the bottom up. It would just recede further and further all the while getting smaller and smaller, in it's entirety.

This tells us that the effect is an optical effect due to bending of light.

What constitutes "a long period of time"?

So when it's not caused by refraction, it's caused by The Laws of Perspective and when it's not caused by The Laws of Perspective, it's caused by refraction?

It doesn't matter what the mechanism is. The fact that it is inconsistent debunks the sinking ship proof of a globe earth.

The only inconsistencies lie in FE, not RE. In FE, sometimes it's refraction or Electromagnetic Accelerator/Bendy Light, when it's not one of those it's Laws of Perspective. In RE, when the ship sinks hull first and disappears over the horizon, it's simply the curvature of the earth.

It's extremely consistent on the globe earth. In fact it happens exactly the same everyday at sunset & sunrise, for me anyway. Sunrise, the sun appears at the horizon where it was dark and there was no sun before and from the top down, reveals itself. Sunset, the sun sinks from the bottom up until it completely vanishes and the land gets dark. On a globe earth, so consistent you could almost set a watch to it.

The problem with FE's refraction or Electromagnetic Accelerator/Bendy Light or Laws of Perspective trifecta of inconsistencies, basically a multiple choice effort, is that none account for the absolute reveal or disappearance of the object over the horizon wholesale. Meaning the object, In FE, lets say a ship, would shrink in it's entirety as it got further away on a plane until it's a pinpoint, too hard to see, not sink from the bottom up and disappear. The ship, on a globe earth, as it get further away, sinks, hull first all the way up to the top of the mast and disappears, completely. That's what we consistently observe.

It doesn't matter what the mechanism is. The fact that it is inconsistent debunks the sinking ship proof of a globe earth.

It debunks the pure mathematical simplification of a perfectly spherical earth without an atmosphere where light travels in perfectly straight lines, but everyone knows that that is a simplification.More FE wanting your cake and eating it reasoning here.

The claim is that ships don't really sink below the horizon but can be "restored" with optical magnification"Aha!", you say, "See! The earth is flat!"But then when you're shown clear pictures/video of ships sinking below the horizon you invoke waves/refraction/EA"Yes!", you say, "The ship sinks below the horizon, exactly as we predicted!"

But you literally just said that ships don't sin... "Exactly as we predicted!"

Experiments have already proven that electromagnetic fields do not bend light.

Everyone seems to forget that Bobby already provided quite the explanation on this (and much to my disappointment no rebuttals to Bobby). And there are several resources you can check out elsewhere that continues to prove EAT wrong.

Maybe this will help. These are exaggerated to better show how the refracting of different wavelengths works to create the dispersion of color.

In this example, light is bending toward earth as it encounters increasing air density, refracting towards the denser medium. Red (longer wavelength) is refracted less than green (shorter wavelength). Because the green light has experienced a greater degree of refraction, the perceived elevation of that source will be higher than the less-refracted red. So the green rim will be elevated above the longer wavelength colors.

That prism-effect of refraction isn't enough to produce a perceptible green rim on the sun except under fine detail in some photographs. But that isn't the "flash." To get the flash you need the magnification of that thin green rim by a mirage or mock mirage. Even then, it often takes a camera with telephoto to capture it. I've never seen it with my naked eyes.

But that's the explanation. And as long as sunlight is passing through the atmosphere/layer at an angle where it is encountering increasing density, it will refract toward the normal; toward the denser medium. In an atmosphere, conforming around a spherical earth, that happens even if the light is tangent to the earth. Because the atmosphere curves away, the light will refract to try to follow the lower, denser portion of the atmosphere. On a flat earth, that won't happen (unless there's some principle of atmolayer layering over a flat earth that isn't also flat.)

But regardless, if penetrating the atmolayer at an angle, this will happen on a flat earth also. You just need the geometry to produce a shallow enough angle.

In either case, that type of refraction (toward the earth) will also push the sun to appear higher, not lower. On a globe, it's said the sun at sunset is a whole width higher than it is astronomically due to this atmospheric refractive effect. That means when you see the sun touch down on an sea horizon, its geometric position is actually completely below the horizon. It is this same rationale for why globe earth curvature calculators must take into consideration standard atmospheric refraction and not rely on mere geometric calculation. Light refracts to follow the curve, making things appear above the horizon that might otherwise be obscured were it not for the atmosphere.

Now, as for refraction in the opposite direction:

Without explaining how it works, "refraction" has been cited by FE proponents to explain how a sun that is actually remaining overhead but receding into the distance over a flat earth can appear to descend to the horizon. In order for that to be true, the light from the sun must curve away from the flat surface of earth. If it's actually refraction doing that, then that means the upper layers of the atmolayer must be denser than the lower elevations. That may be true in isolated, transient and non-standard conditions but isn't typical; certainly not standard enough to consistently produce a setting sun day in and day out.

Additionally, even if one claims that the atmolayer actually is causing light to bend upward, remember that the prism effect would cause greens to refract more and reds less, but because the direction is reversed, so is the fringing on the sun and the green rim would be on the bottom of the setting sun, not the top.

The same reasoning applies regardless of what's causing the bending. If it's EAT, then EAT will affect the shorter wavelengths slightly more than the longer wavelengths and produce a bottom-limb green fringe too vice the upper-limb "green flash" we can observe.

(Edit: thinking on this a bit, I realize now that EAT makes no such commitment. Just because refractive "bending" affects shorter wavelengths more than longer wavelengths doesn't mean that that is necessarily true if EA is doing the bending. There's a reason why it is true of refraction in optics, but given that EA is based on dark energy concepts and has -- for 10 years now -- remained an untested and still developmental hypothesis, I suppose that assuming that the "bendy" influence would have a dispersive effect similar to refraction might not be a sound one. It might help to know how the equation was derived to know if there's any wavelength, frequency or energy dependency on the amount of x-y "bending." This is just occurring to me.)

My argument is that this is one of the ways to zetetically determine whether or not EAT (or upward refraction) is causing the sun to appear to set; unless, of course, there is some other explanation for the prismatic effect on the sun that hasn't been discovered yet. But it can't be the same as the explanation used in a globe earth without undermining any light-bending-upwards explanations to explain how the sun can appear lower than it actually is.

In fact it happens exactly the same everyday at sunset & sunrise, for me anyway. Sunrise, the sun appears at the horizon where it was dark and there was no sun before and from the top down, reveals itself. Sunset, the sun sinks from the bottom up until it completely vanishes and the land gets dark. On a globe earth, so consistent you could almost set a watch to it.

It's the FE claim that the sunrise and sunset says more about refraction than about the shape of the earth. When looking at the time lapse are you really of the mindset that the earth is changing shape based on the changing sinking ship effect?

Meaning the object, In FE, lets say a ship, would shrink in it's entirety as it got further away on a plane until it's a pinpoint, too hard to see, not sink from the bottom up and disappear. The ship, on a globe earth, as it get further away, sinks, hull first all the way up to the top of the mast and disappears, completely. That's what we consistently observe.

Again did you not see the video? You saw an object sink in it's entirety from the bottom up and disappear. It didn't move further away. By this logic the video presented shows that the earth alternates between round and flat.

You claim that it's extremely consistent. Did you not see the time lapse video presented showing very clear evidence suggesting that it is NOT extremely consistent.

Watched it many times. Lots of miraging. The shoreline visually vacillates upwards and downwards. Refraction cause all kinds of visual anomalies. But that's not the same as an object moving further away and disappearing over the horizon, from the bottom upward.

In fact it happens exactly the same everyday at sunset & sunrise, for me anyway. Sunrise, the sun appears at the horizon where it was dark and there was no sun before and from the top down, reveals itself. Sunset, the sun sinks from the bottom up until it completely vanishes and the land gets dark. On a globe earth, so consistent you could almost set a watch to it.

It's the FE claim that the sunrise and sunset says more about refraction than about the shape of the earth. When looking at the time lapse are you really of the mindset that the earth is changing shape based on the changing sinking ship effect?

No. For a couple of reasons. The miraging you see in the timelapse is not the sinking ship effect. As well a sunset is just that, it sets, sinks below the horizon, from the bottom up, it disappears. Refraction can cause one to be able to see the setting sun for maybe a few minutes longer than you should. But the fact of the matter is that it sinks below the horizon and doesn't vacillate back upwards like the shoreline in the timelapse. The sun disappears not to be seen again until the following morning.

Meaning the object, In FE, lets say a ship, would shrink in it's entirety as it got further away on a plane until it's a pinpoint, too hard to see, not sink from the bottom up and disappear. The ship, on a globe earth, as it get further away, sinks, hull first all the way up to the top of the mast and disappears, completely. That's what we consistently observe.

Again did you not see the video? You saw an object sink in it's entirety from the bottom up and disappear. It didn't move further away. By this logic the video presented shows that the earth alternates between round and flat.

Yes, watched the video. Yes, the shoreline vacillates up and down due to refractive miraging. Did the shoreline disappear from the bottom up, stay that way for 12 hours and then rise again back into view? The timelapse has literally nothing to do with the "sinking ship effect" other than the fact that refraction can pull things up and push things down. Refraction does not make the sun disappear over the horizon for half a day, everyday. Nor does it account for a ship going over a horizon sinking hull up never to be seen again.

Watched it many times. Lots of miraging. The shoreline visually vacillates upwards and downwards. Refraction cause all kinds of visual anomalies. But that's not the same as an object moving further away and disappearing over the horizon, from the bottom upward.

I agree 100% that it's not the same. But you must admit that, in a situation where an object is moving further away and disappearing over the perceived ocean horizon from the bottom upward that there can be all kinds of visual anomalies affecting the path the light from the object takes before hitting the eye of the person observing the object.

Yes, watched the video. Yes, the shoreline vacillates up and down due to refractive miraging. Did the shoreline disappear from the bottom up, stay that way for 12 hours and then rise again back into view? The timelapse has literally nothing to do with the "sinking ship effect" other than the fact that refraction can pull things up and push things down.

Since we both agree that refractive mirages and other visual anomalies can pull things up. As demonstrated in the video these optical issues are "pulling up" the water between the shore and the observer. causing the shore to disappear, from the bottom up. Over larger distances this refraction effect would be larger because the light would be interacting with more things like air molecules, water vapor, particulates etc on a much larger scale. It's the FE claim that this "pulling up" effect (that we both agree can happen) is happening when an observer sees a ship traveling away disappear from the bottom up.

Watched it many times. Lots of miraging. The shoreline visually vacillates upwards and downwards. Refraction cause all kinds of visual anomalies. But that's not the same as an object moving further away and disappearing over the horizon, from the bottom upward.

I agree 100% that it's not the same. But you must admit that, in a situation where an object is moving further away and disappearing over the perceived ocean horizon from the bottom upward that there can be all kinds of visual anomalies affecting the path the light from the object takes before hitting the eye of the person observing the object.

Sure, but the exact same visual refractive anomalies have to be present for each and every sunrise and sunset for every observer around the world. Hence the word, 'anomaly'.

Yes, watched the video. Yes, the shoreline vacillates up and down due to refractive miraging. Did the shoreline disappear from the bottom up, stay that way for 12 hours and then rise again back into view? The timelapse has literally nothing to do with the "sinking ship effect" other than the fact that refraction can pull things up and push things down.

Since we both agree that refractive mirages and other visual anomalies can pull things up. As demonstrated in the video these optical issues are "pulling up" the water between the shore and the observer. causing the shore to disappear, from the bottom up. Over larger distances this refraction effect would be larger because the light would be interacting with more things like air molecules, water vapor, particulates etc on a much larger scale. It's the FE claim that this "pulling up" effect (that we both agree can happen) is happening when an observer sees a ship traveling away disappear from the bottom up.

Yes, the pulling up effect can happen as well as a pushing down effect. But the point is, why does a sunset go down, bottom to top and a sunrise reveal itself from from top to bottom, separated by 12 hours or so, like clockwork? Why does a ship going over the horizon go down, bottom to top and when coming back over the horizon reveal itself from top to bottom? What magical refractive property knows when to mirage an object up and then mirage it down?

Again, the sun is a great example of the sinking ship effect. Today, if I'm standing on the sand at Ocean Beach here in San Francisco looking west out over the Pacific at sunset, I'm seeing a 3000 mile high, 32 mile wide FE sun disappearing completely bottom to top below the horizon by some means of a refractive mirage anomaly? And I see that same anomaly everyday? At exactly the time our apps predict?

As well, today at sunset, the 3000 mile high, 32 mile wide FE sun I'm seeing disappear, I'm actually able to see it without the aid of any magnification even though it's 7200 miles away from me over Australia:

A few hours later if I brought my telescope along, I should be able to pull the sun back into view even though it's now over Africa. But I can't, there's something in the way.

Fascinating! What is the formula for that? I imagine if we know the distance we should be able to calculate the obscured height at that distance due to the acceleration of the light.

Would the sinking ship effect be the same for distant mountains? Or is it specific to over water? (I mean how would a ship sink on a mountain? Unless it was Noah's Ark.)I guess Moses' ark settled in the Nile and Elijah's arc sunk into a mountain.)

But honestly, it would be great to have a formula for the sinking ship effect so when a glober says "See?!" we can say "Sure, it's acceleration of light and I have a formula that predicts it."

Hey, who's the chap who has a formula for everything? That would be a down right handy formula to have.